Evidence we have published that Mullah Omar shared, and presumably continues to share, a close working relationship with top al-Qaida leaders makes depressing reading for those who place their hope in a negotiated peace in Afghanistan. A repeated precondition for such a peace is that the Afghan Taliban renounce the international terrorist organisation. Critics of the US/Nato strategy of capturing or killing mid-level Taliban commanders argue that the Taliban and al-Qaida have fundamentally different objectives. Some have argued that a public political shift on the Taliban's position towards al-Qaida is more possible after Osama bin Laden's death. This may now turn out to be wishful thinking.

Documents found in Bin Laden's house, some dating weeks before the Navy Seals' raid, reveal that a three-way conversation was taking place between Omar, Bin Laden and his ideological mentor Ayman al-Zawahiri. Two of three are still alive one year on from the Abbottabad raid, and one source says that there is no reason to believe that either Omar or Zawahiri have substantially changed their views. This raises several questions. To what extent does Omar represent, let alone control, a multi-faceted insurgency with a life of its own? If the US knew of these documents a year ago when the raid took place, what was the point of engaging in secret talks with Taliban? To answer the second question first, they must have had other reasons to think that engaging in such talks was worthwhile. Maybe their chief motive was to peel away layers of the Taliban like an onion. We know that, while they lasted, the talks created disquiet in the ranks of the Taliban and some defections. Some fighters wondered what they were fighting for. And as for the first question, these documents show how limited our knowledge of the Taliban is, and how heavily both sides in this debate rely on untested assumptions.

As the Taliban's latest attacks on Kabul shows, the war is at least as much about propaganda as it is about the battle for territory. The co-ordinated attacks fell somewhere short of the start of the Taliban's claimed "spring offensive". On the other hand, the ability to deploy and co-ordinate as many as 36 heavily armed insurgents in four different provinces in and around Kabul simultaneously, and do it in total secrecy, testifies to the insurgency's enduring reach, if not its strength. The Taliban have been written off too many times before, only to return more determined.

Talks about opening a Taliban liaison office in Doha have been suspended. In its statement the Taliban detailed why, and it is now clear they will not be restarted any time soon. US strategy is clear. They think that the exit ticket for their troops is a regenerated Afghan national army capable of holding Kabul and most of the state together as long as it is funded by billions of dollars of US subsidy and backed by US air power and special forces. If it works, the best that can be achieved is a protracted stalemate, which might convince all agents in this conflict that their struggle is unwinnable. If it fails, this is a recipe for a return to the civil war of the 1990s. The splintering of the Taliban that the US/Nato military tactics are trying to achieve would, under these conditions, open up opportunities for more radical ideologies. While neither side thinks that fighting and negotiating are mutually exclusive activities, this strategy falls short of one based on seeking a ceasefire, disengagement and long-term multilateral talks.

Is that approach invalidated by what we have published? No, but it is certainly made harder. For one thing, the Bin Laden documents play into the foundational myth of the war that foreign troops are in Afghanistan to prevent terrorism back home. The conflation of foreign jihadis with Pashtun nationalists makes it harder for western politicians to present serious negotiations as a viable option. But that still remains the case. The fact that we are still nowhere near such negotiations means the US and Nato feel all too comfortable about their strategy. They have little reason to be.